Source: Asiaone.comAnimals falling victim to violence, abuse and neglect continue to make headlines in Malaysia. We look back at six of the 2013's worst animal scandals.Although Malaysians would rather forget the horrifying photos and reports of cruelty against animals that have become commonplace in our social media feeds, it'd be heartless to ignore the reality of what's happening. From the poisoning of endangered elephants to the inhumane killing of unwanted strays, the evidence is clear that Malaysians need to step up efforts to protect the well-being of our animal friends, lest we see more of these sickening cases of unchecked cruelty.Warning: Some of the videos and pictures are very upsetting - we advise viewer discretion.Pygmy elephants poisoned in Sabah A baby elephant caressing its lifeless mother: That was the heart-tugging image that caused an international scandal in January when 14 pygmy elephants - 10 females and four males aged between four and 20 years - were found dead in Sabah's Gunung Rare Forest Reserve. When news broke out that the endangered pachyderms had succumbed to poisoning, allegedly by workers in oil palm plantations bordering the reserve, it hit home hard. How much of our natural fauna are we willing to sacrifice for profit? Despite rewards posted for information on the culprits, it's doubtful we'll ever know what really happened. Our only consolation is that Baby Joe, who had stayed beside his mother's carcass for days before being found, is doing well. Photos and more....

Source: FreeMalaysiatoday.comBy Sean WhyteAs we approach the first anniversary of the mass poisoning of 14 Pygmy elephants in Sabah, now might be a good time to reflect on how this hideous crime has gone unpunished. When the news of the poisoning first broke, we read lots of concern expressed by Minister Masidi Manjun, Dr Sen Nathan, and others. What we have never subsequently heard and doubt we ever will is, who was responsible for these deaths and why have there been no arrests? Recently in Free Malaysia Today an article queried if more than 14 elephants were in fact poisoned. Maybe 16. There was neither confirmation or denial from Sabah Wildlife Department. Why the silence? In February 2013 CNN reported: “Poisoning elephants is a very common practice in these parts of the world,” said Barney Long, the World Wildlife Fund’s Asian species expert. “The elephants are usually poisoned with bait such as pineapple, palm oil or bananas. The poison is fast-acting and can kill up to a whole herd.” The purpose of poisoning the elephants: To make the land safe for farming. Given what Long said, which we know to be correct, how hard can it be to track down and arrest the culprits in the area of Sabah concerned? What industry clears land in that area? Have the premises of the company(s) concerned been searched for evidence of poisoning? How many people were interviewed? Were their bodies and clothes quickly tested for contamination by the poison? Where are the records of the interviews and searches conducted? I’ve lost count of how many orangutans, rhinos and elephants have ‘disappeared’ from Sabah. We are talking large numbers. Will the Sabah Wildlife Department reveal to us how many people have been arrested and prosecuted in the last 10 years concerning all these missing and supposedly protected species? It’s my impression no one for a moment believes the Sabah Wildlife Department investigated the killing of the 14 elephants a year ago thoroughly or correctly. This slaughter of innocent, highly endangered elephants, leaves an indelible stain on Sabah and those government officers responsible for protecting its wildlife. These same people seem always to have excuses, but no answers. How long will it before there is another conference in Sabah to ‘talk’ about saving wildlife

Source: FreeMalaysiatoday.comBy Marvin Augustine Twin assault by planters and poachers is decimating Sabah’s wildlife at a faster rate than foreseen, claim activists in the state. Habitat destruction and illegal hunting contribute to dwindling sightings of Sabah’s endemic species in all of the state’s rainforests. The rapid conversion of many fragile yet wildlife sustaining areas into oil palm plantations after decades of logging has pushed wildlife conservation in the state into a trendy activity. Such has been the destruction that several international wildlife and environment protection groups have set up local branches to start conservation programmes that state has been slow to implement. This has placed the spotlight squarely on the Sabah government and its role on wildlife conservation enforcement. The outcome of investigations into the fatal poisoning of 14 pygmy elephant earlier this year near the Gunung Rara forest reserve is a case in point. Jane (not her real name) a young local environment activist who requested anonymity said: It seems even this horrific incident has failed to slow down the conversion of the forest to palm oil plantation. There has been no word about what happened let alone prosecution of any culprits. “It’s like they (state authorities) have swept those elephants under the carpet. What does that say about their duties and responsibilities? It is giving the impression that someone big is behind this and is being protected. All these conferences they (state government officials) come out and speak about wildlife conservation are just media events to show they are concerned,” said Jane. She has a point.Conflicting stand The outspoken Sabah Environment Protection Association or Sepa, was not invited to attend the East and Southeast Asian Wild Animal Rescue Network (WARN) Conference as a participant. There top state officials spoke about the lack of enforcement and the open sale of bear parts in the city. Until now, the state government investigation task force, set up after the 14 elephants were found dead near a forested area bordering an oil palm plantation, have failed to identify the culprits. A RM120,000 cash offer for information on the poisoning remains unclaimed. More....

Recently in Zimbabwe while the country was preoccupied with its general elections, the press almost completely ignored a catastrophic chemical poisoning of animals. Ivory poachers killed more than 80 elephants by poisoning water holes with cyanide. The elephants had constituted one of the world’s biggest herds, and were slaughtered in Zimbabwe’s largest park, the Hwange National Park, which is located just south of the Victoria Falls. Because security forces were focussed on maintaining calm during and after the elections, police and rangers were slow to react and only succeeded in recovering 19 tusks, cyanide and wire snares after a sweep through villages close to the park. “We are declaring war on the poachers,” Saviour Kasukuwere, the country’s environment minister, said. “We are responding with all our might because our wildlife, including the elephants they are killing, is part of the natural resources and wealth that we want to benefit the people of Zimbabwe.” The first time water holes were poisoned in Zimbabwe was in June 2013, when nine elephants had their tusks removed and at least 21 other animal carcasses were discovered. The sheer lunacy of chemical poisoning is the unintended consequences. All animals and birds of prey that feast and ingest the meat of the poisoned animals are themselves poisoned and die. This chain reaction is aggravated because the elephant corpses are left to rot in the veld once the tusks are removed, as are the carcasses of the other animals. As it is often customary for local communities to cook and eat the meat of these poached animals, they too stand the risk of being poisoned. Drinking water from these water-holes would kill humans as well. In the first case of chemical poisoning, the poison was named as “two-step”. “Sometimes [it is\ called ‘two step,’ meaning the animal — once it consumes water with the poison in it — takes two steps, then it dies, very potent, and that would mean the water in which it has been placed is permanently poisoned. It’s very likely the mud itself is contaminated,” said Peter Henning, who is involved with wildlife management in south-eastern Zimbabwe, according to the Voice of America. More....

Displaced and injured elephants will have a new place to call home in the Bornean Elephant Sanctuary (BES) which will be officially launched tomorrow.

The first phase of the project, which started in October last year, was completed on June 28, and a juvenile female elephant has become the first "guest". Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) director Datuk Dr Laurentius Ambu said it would not have been possible without the assistance of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), the project's main sponsor, and Japanese partners led by Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) Japan. Besides funding from the state government, MPOC has pledged RM5.2 million for the project, of which RM500,000 was used in phase one. BCT Japan and its 12 corporate partners, including Asahiyama Zoo and Saraya Corporation, have provided RM1.6 million in funds for the first phase. BES, located at Lot 8 of the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, covers 1,214ha with a built-up area of 25 ha. The development is expected to be completed in the next two to three years. "The total infrastructure cost is about RM30 million, while the overall master plan, which includes the setting up of the ecological corridor between Segaliud Lokan Forest Reserve and Batu Putih, costs between RM50 million to RM60 million," he told a press conference here yesterday.He said staff for the first phase comprised six keepers with two each from BCT, Wildlife Rescue Unit, which is funded by MPOC and SWD. They are led by a senior ranger. More....

The brutal killing of Geng, a male Sumatran elephant, is still fresh in my mind. The case made this year’s World Elephant Day relevant to address many threats clouding the existence of this species in Indonesia. Last month, the country was shocked over the killing of the 22-year-old male Sumatran elephant in Rantau Sabon village, in Aceh Jaya district. Geng was found in a very devastated condition with its trunk cut off, eyes chopped off, head badly damaged, and missing tusks. There were spears marks in its skull prodding for intended slaughtering of people wanted its tusks. It did not take long for the case to spark attention – if not anger – from activists and animal lovers, through social media, pushing the Indonesian government to investigate and arrests whoever responsible for the killing. The case received special attentions from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan who reacted through their personal Twitter accounts. President Yudhoyono slammed the killing as an “irresponsible action” during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and instructed officials to arrest the culprit. He also hoped it will not happen again in the future. Zulkifli, meanwhile, put out a much more encouraging statement on his Twitter account promising that they would get people behind the killing within a week. In the latest development, Zulkifli indicated that village officials were allegedly involved in the killing. The case is still now being handled by the Forestry Ministry and Riau police. In December 2011, Sumatran elephants, one of Asian elephants found in Indonesia beside the Borneo pygmy elephant, are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. More....

An ailing baby Borneo pygmy elephant, the sole survivor of a poisoning that killed a herd of 14 elephants including its mother in January, is out of the woods.

The calf Baby Kejora @ Joe has gained weight and is now socialising with other elephants at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park here as veterinarians believe that the elephant is now in good health. “He is very healthy and has gained over 100 kg over the past few months, from 90kg when we rescued him to almost 200kg now,” said Sabah Wildlife Department Assistant Director Dr. Sen Nathan. Sen said Joe had even made friends with another rescue, a four-year-old elephant – Pikang which brought to the zoo after it was found with half his trunk gone during a wildlife operation in Lahad Datu six months back. “Its trunk was believed to have been cut off due to an old trap before we found him,” he explained. “Joe is looking at the things Pikang does, and observes the leaves Pikang takes before tasting them himself,” he added.The story of Joe also caught attention of many nations after it was photographed trying to wake his dead mother up at the Gunung Rara Forest Reserve about 140km from Tawau on Jan 25. More....

Toxic constituents were intentionally added to the food eaten by the Bornean pygmy elephants that were found dead at the Gunung Rara forest reserve in Tawau, early this year.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said a toxicology analysis by the Queensland Biosecurity Sciences Laboratory, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry in Australia discovered from the liver samples of two elephants and a sample of white powder at a location where another elephant was found dead, showed a high level of heavy metal such as arsenic, cadmium, iron and chromium.

"The combination of such metals is usually found in mines, foundries, garbage and toxic waste dumping sites. There are no activities of such nature in the area so the phenomenon is just incomprehensible," he said in his winding up speech for the ministry at the Sabah State Assembly session in Likas, here Thursday.

Fourteen Bornean elephants were found dead at the forest reserve, about 139km from Tawau, in January this year.

Masidi said the findings by pathologists from the veterinary faculty at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Thailand suggested that caustic or toxic elements had damaged the elephants' digestive system.

He said analysis by the Chemistry department of Malaysia and Ramathibodi Poison Centre, Thailand on the elephants' kidneys, spleen and lymphoid tissues supported the findings although they could not trace the presence of toxic elements. More....

Five Bornean elephants near Danau Girang Field Centre, in Lot 5 of the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary (LKWS) have been fitted with satellite collars. The exercise, carried out between June 4 and 6, aimed to help the authorities to collect additional movement data on the elephants’ movement. The move, was part of a collaborative project between the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD), the NGO HUTAN and the Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), a joint press release from Sabah Wildlife Department and Danau Girang Field Centre said. The project was funded by the Asian Elephant Conservation Fund from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Elephant Family, Houston Zoo and Columbus Zoo. The collaring operations were led by two young women, Malaysian PhD student Nurzhafarina Othman, who is registered at Cardiff University and attached to DGFC, and Mexican wildlife veterinarian Dr Diana Ramirez who is attached to SWD’s Wildlife Rescue Unit and DGFC. Dr Diana Ramirez said in just three days, their team managed to collar four females and one male. “We re-collared a female that was previously tagged in October 2011 and named Putut, three new females selected by our colleague Nurzhafarina for her PhD on the social behaviour of the Kinabatangan elephants, and named Ita, Bell and Tess; and one male of 30-40 years old named Sejati. “I would like to congratulate my team and especially all the boys from our Wildlife Rescue Unit, as well as the River Keeper Unit boys and DGFC staff and students who did an amazing job,” said Ramirez. More....

Two critically endangered Sumatran elephants were found dead in an Indonesian national park and are believed to have been poisoned, the international conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said Monday. It takes to three the number of the elephants found dead in Tesso Nilo National Park on Sumatra island in the last month. The carcasses of a male aged around five and a young female were found on Friday about a kilometre (0.6 miles) apart, said WWF spokeswoman Syamsidar, who goes by one name. "We believe that the elephants were poisoned as the carcasses were quite close to each other," she said, adding that autopsies needed to be conducted before the cause of death could be confirmed. A Sumatran elephant was discovered dead in the park early last month, also from suspected poisoning, she added. Fifteen Sumatran elephants were found dead last year in Riau province, where the national park is located, with around half them found to have been poisoned, Syamsidar said.Fewer than 3,000 Sumatran elephants remain in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Rampant expansion of palm oil and paper plantations and the mining industry have destroyed nearly 70 percent of the elephant's forest habitat over 25 years, according to the WWF, and the animals have been targeted by poachers. More....

I whole heartedly support the urging by Sahabat Alam Malaysia's (SAM) president, the honourable SM Mohd Idris, that if the Sabah Wildlife Department, Natural Resources and Environment Ministry and the Sabah police continue to play dumb on the callous poisoning of the 14 pygmy elephants that took place six months ago in North Borneo, the public should join hands to show their displeasure in a great way.

It is indeed disturbing and mind boggling to learn that after more than six months the authorities have yet to arrest anyone for the brutal poisoning of our rare endangered pygmy elephants.We are getting all kinds of excuses for the delay in the investigation. It is understandable for some delay in revealing the investigations due to GE13 but not to this point. It's almost half a year now!

It is a shame and laughable to learn of the claim that even an advanced country like Australia which is well known in the world for its competence in analysing veterinary specimens has not been able to identify the poison.Are we dealing with some kind of alien poison from outer space?

I cannot comprehend why the authorities are still unable to solve the issue. I hope the authorities are not trying to protect the culprits whoever they may be. This is a serious and unpardonable crime.The culprits who poisoned the pygmy elephants must be brought to bear the full weight of the law. More....

Villagers in North Kalimantan’s Nunukan district say a group of elephants has been encroaching on their land and destroying their crops for the past five days, a claim that conservationists say indicates that the endangered animals are being driven out of their habitat. Putra Sinar Jaya, the head of Sekaduyan Taka village in Simenggaris subdistrict, said on Tuesday that the group of three elephants had destroyed “dozens of hectares” of crops, including oil palms, banana trees ad cassava plants, since last week. “For the past five days they’ve been coming here and destroying everyone’s plants,” he said, adding that they usually arrived at twilight and left before dawn. “We fear that soon they’ll start destroying people’s homes. And we can’t defend ourselves otherwise we’ll be accused of killing wildlife.” He said villagers had reported seeing the animals arriving from the direction of Serudong in Malaysia’s Sabah state. Wiwin Effendy, WWF Indonesia’s East Kalimantan coordinator, said that if the reports of the elephant invasions were confirmed, then it would be the first time that the animals were known to have encroached onto human settlements in Simenggaris subdistrict. “As far as we know, they usually stick close to the four rivers in the border region between Nunukan and Malaysia, which is in Tulin Onsoi subdistrict,” he said. Wiwin added that the reports that they were now straying further indicated that they had been driven out because of the destruction of their primary habitat. He said the elephants’ known habitat there was rapidly being lost to the expansion of oil palm plantations and logging concessions, since permits for commercial activities in the area began to be issued seven years ago. More....

Remember when you were in school and you first heard about the blue-footed booby, passenger pigeons, or Carolina parakeets? All beautiful birds that are now extinct. It was said that Carolina parakeets that lived right here in the Midwest, were so plentiful they clouded the sky when their flock flew over.

Having a parakeet as a child, I have often dreamed of seeing a Carolina parakeet. What colors did it have, how big was it, what did it really look like?

What would happen if the rhinoceros and elephants that we all know became extinct within our lifetime? How do we explain to our children and grandchildren what they looked like? How do we explain how we let them become extinct without doing anything about it?

According to Michael Graham Richard of Science, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service is doing something about it. They have now graduated four "wildlife detector dogs" to identify elephant tusks and rhino horns. Their names are Viper, Butter, Lancer, and Locket, and although their names may sound sweet and docile, they are anything but. These dogs have tough duty sniffing out poachers who are trying to smuggle in ivory through U.S. ports, airports, even UPS, and FedEx. "The recent rapid growth in the global trade in protected wildlife is pushing some species perilously close to extinction. Elephant and rhino populations in particular are declining at alarming rates," said Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement Deputy Chief Ed Grace. "The battle to stop wildlife smuggling is one we simply cannot afford to lose, and using dogs and their phenomenal sense of smell to catch smugglers will give us a real leg up in this effort."

Rhinos are leaving this planet at alarming rates and are probably the number one poached animal on earth. According to en.avaaz.org, there are 20,000 white rhinos, 4,880 black rhinos, 2,913 Greater one-horned rhinos, 200 Sumatran rhinos, and 50 javan rhinos left. Worst of all over 100 rhinoceros were killed in South Africa in less than two months last fall.

According to the BBC, Science & Nature, there are about 25,600 Asian elephants left in the wild and less than 1,500 Pygmy elephants left in Borneo, a country known for its formerly large elephant population. There may be around 500,000 African elephants left, but their number is drastically being reduced by loss of habitat and poaching. When is it going to stop?

You may be asking, how are four dogs going to make a difference. Simply said, they are not, but these dogs are a pilot program. And, if they turn out to be effective, more wildlife detector dogs will be on their way to sniffing out poached ivory and leading authorities to the poachers.

The brutal 'War Against Nature' has nearly annihilated the Sumatran and Borneo elephants. And the prime culprit causing habitat loss is the rapacious and insatiable Indonesian palm oil plantation industry. In addition to the corruption, which is rife throughout Indonesia's protected forests - poachers have also slaughtered the elephants for their tusks feeding the burgeoning international ivory market. Over the past year in excess of 18 Sumatran elephants have been murdered. On the island of Borneo a similar story is playing out with the critically endangered pygmy elephants. It is heartbreaking to watch a pygmy elephant calf mourn the loss of its mother in the Gunug Rara Forest Reserve. Last month in Sydney, Australia, Leif Cocks, founder of The Orangutan Project and Project Leader Alex Mobrucker launched the International Elephant Project to help save the remaining wild Sumatran and Borneo elephants utilizing effective elephant conservation actions. There's less than 1,600 Sumatran elephants and about 1,000 Borneo pygmy elephants left on the globe. This is an epic crisis and these awesome animals are loosing their habitat in many cases due to illegal palm oil plantations. The goal of the International Elephant Project is for the remaining elephants to live in the wild with their herds, and coexist peacefully with the indigenous peoples. Please support the International Elephant Project they need help - now! Earth Dr Reese Halter is a broadcaster, biologist and author of The Insatiable Bark Beetle.